The one that got away

The French girl from your study abroad. The grade school crush. The girl from the bar that one night. Everyone has one.....even a jaded club promoter.

Heidi and I went to high school together. We barely knew each other but our brief interactions were among the only things I remember – or choose to remember – from my formative years. We sat next to each other in Advanced Placement Biology. She was studious and nerdy but underneath the square glasses and overalls lay the burgeoning femininity of a half-Swedish, half-Vietnamese young girl, not yet full aware of her ability to weaken men’s knees. She was like the girl in the Freddy Prinze Jr. movie, beautiful but slightly awkward and focused more on class than the varsity football game, ready for a makeover to truly unlock her potential.

We sat up front. Her for the proximity to the overhead projector. Me for the opportunity to steal glances of her thighs as her rose-patterned black shimmering skirt hiked up her leg when she sat down. My focus on fossil records and DNA replication was constantly being diverted each time Heidi raised her hand to ask a question, or ran her fingers through her hair, sending her straight sandy blond hair back to the small of her back.

I make her laugh by signing into the lab sheet as “Mike Hunt”. She shows me pictures of her that her mom says makes her look too “chink-y.” Each time I get up and walk toward the Bunson burner during lab, I sneak a glimpse of her frilly, pastel colored underwear as she crosses and uncrosses her legs, sending an unfamiliar tingling sensation through my boy parts.

As graduation approaches, I’m informed through a mutual friend that Heidi doesn’t have a date for the prom. My desire to ask her is overwhelmed by my painful shyness. This future Hollywood club promoter is paralyzed by a deathly fear of rejection. Prom passes and graduation arrives. As we are signing each other’s yearbooks I am surprised to find that Heidi has left me her phone number. On the last day of school we run into each other in an empty hall:

“You have my number right?”
I do.
“You should call or something”
“I will” my voice cracks

I stared at her phone number in my yearbook for more than a month. Endless permutations of potential future interactions ran through my mind. By the end of the month I had married and divorced her dozens of times in my minds eye and with each machination of imagined captured and lost young lust, I became more fearful and convinced of the futility of picking up the phone.

I never called.

Over the years, Heidi became a metaphor. A reason to approach the random girl at the coffee shop. To head out on a rainy night when I’d rather stay in. The ups and downs – especially the downs - of finding lust and love in Hollywood were occasionally tempered by the memory of a 17-year old closing a yearbook and the feeling of defeat as he stored it away in the back of his closet for the last time.

For most people, this story epilogues with a chance encounter at the grocery store years later, or a name-tag wearing high school reunion where the object of their past crush has morphed into a stroller pushing suburban resident, heavy-set and married, the remnants of youthful desire only faintly conspicuous behind a nostalgic twinkle in each other’s eyes. The sting of lost potential is assuaged by the knowledge that not all that glitters is gold and the passing years reassure that your idealized crush was just that.

But this isn’t a storybook Hollywood ending. This is a True Hollywood Story.

Last Saturday I am on a bar stool, watching UFC 109. Between fights I glance up and see a familiar face smiling on the glowing screen. The glasses that slid down her face as she looked up at the chalkboard are gone. The sandy blonde hair is dyed platinum but the dimply smile is unmistakable. She waves at the camera…a wave once directed at me more than a decade earlier when a lesser known member of the cheerleading squad stretched and said hello to a lesser known member of the basketball team as he warmed up for a game.

I entertain a brief fantasy of reconnection. Walking outside a club to greet a long lost crush. Walking through the crowd with fingers interlocked as gawking observers see the more polished versions of two people from humble beginnings.

My eyes return to the plasma screen and to her right side where I see her companion seated next to her at ringside. My brief fantasy is quickly dashed away and my day-dream comes to an abrupt awakening.

Heidi………… is Chuck Liddell’s new girlfriend.

FML